71-Squared: iPhone Game Programming – Tutorial 1

I came across a wonderful series of iPhone Game Programming by 71² and it is outstanding. Source code is also available at the official post. For beginners, this is the series you should probably start with. Thanx 71² team.

iPhone Game Programming – Tutorial 1 from Michael Daley on Vimeo.

Happy iPhone Game Programming

Another Gold Medalist in family !!!

My little brother Rana Omer Hussain, received Gold Medal from Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, at the convocation of Punjab University. It’s an honor for my family to have another Gold Medalist in family. I received Gold Medal but I was 3rd in my batch but my brother stood 1st in his batch, so this is the real Gold Medal in our family.

I wish my brother Best of Luck for his future plans. May Allah bless him and give him success in every aspect of life and hereafter. Ameen.

We both then had our photo together for memories…

iCensored 1.0 && 1.1

Sometimes we get take very nice pictures but get some part of unwanted object, therefore we came up with an idea to remove that object from the picture. But this serious idea turned to a very funny one called iCensored. In this application, we are not removing any object from the picture, instead we have ‘iCensored’ stickers (available in iCensored 1.0) and different objects like clown nose, geometric shapes, devil horns, prison cell, mosaic, skin colors etc in iCensored 1.1. We have also updated the application to scale and rotate the stickers. The final prepared image can be saved in one’s photo album, or can be send to friends via email from within application or can be posted to one’s facebook profile.

The funny part of this application is the usage of the application. While testing we took snapshots of our colleagues in different postures and added an ‘iCensored’ sticker and it created a hilarious scene for those colleagues. Sorry for not explaining further that what kind of image did it become after adding an ‘iCensored’ sticker. hahahahahaha

Besides the idea, the application version 1.0 was developed in 3 days, waited in Apple’s review queue for a week and was in AppStore in last week of August. It crossed 3K downloads with in a week …….. WOW. The application version 1.1 was finalized in a week and waited for almost 2 weeks in Apple’s review queue and was in AppStore in last week of September. So now anyone can get it for FREE.

The App Store link is http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=328169198

iCensored

Happy iCensoring

Google Translator

In one of my posts, I received a comment in some other language and wordpress marked it as spam; but I thought for a second and just being curious what is written in the comment, I selected a word from that comment and searched it in Google. I got an idea that it is a Russian word. Then the remaining task was easy, I opened translate.google.com and translated that comment into English from Russian, and it turned out great………………The person was praising my blog and if I had not translated it, I might have treated it as spam and deleted it………………

Lesson learned is if you see any text in different language, don’t neglect it; use translate.google.com and you might find that text useful.

Happy Translating

TellMyStory 1.0

Our application which has been in Apple’s review pool since 27th April 2009 has been approved and is now available at App Store on 9th August 2009. At last it’s accepted and is available for everyone out there.

TellMyStory is not an ordinary application. It is a serious application for sharing thoughts and images with friends on the run. This application can be used in almost all domains, e.g. this can be used by a reporter; to take snapshots of an important event, record sounds of those event or add verbal/textual comments and send the slideshow instantly to newspaper/magazine editor. This application can also be used for entertainment purposes; people can share their visits, their feelings, their emotions instantly with their friends. They can go to football match for example, capture snapshots , add crowds noise, add comments and share the football craze with their football fanatic friends…………….these are just basic examples, TellMyStory can be used in almost all aspects of daily life.

I have enjoyed a lot developing it. I have used it many times in couple of wedding functions by taking snapshots, applying Ken Burns, adding background music and by recording different sounds. I was quite successful in surprising other people with this quick compiling of real time images and playing them in a slideshow. I enjoyed it and I hope that everyone will enjoy it in their own ways. The learning curve of this application is hardly 15-30 minutes. When my 14 year brother saw this application, he was very interested, he started taking snapshots and adding music and came to me to ask only one thing which was how do I move/scale the images………..he was asking about how to apply the Ken Burns effect and I showed him the steps and there he was. He starting making shows with different effects and funny sound effects and the rest is history. Our chairperson’s daughter came up with a show which is now added as a default story in the application. This is just to inform everyone that making a story is very easy and interesting.

It took about 3 months for development, about a month for quality assurance and about 2 months for desiging in parallel. The main image also changed with the passage of developement. The one above is the released one, a couple of other Default images are:

The application TellMyStory can be downloaded from this link: TellMyStory.

Thank you Vahzay iPhone Team for making the dream come true.

New iPhone Application

Nowadays I am thinking about a new iPhone application, which might use some iPhone SDK 3.0 features and cocos2d architecture. Thinking, thinking, thinking……………………………………… I would appreciate if anyone might give some input or share their idea, and I might make an application around it. thanx in advance

Gobbledygook

I am a member of Counter strike clan named AZOSH…………..named after me and my brothers. Every one has a nick and mine is Gobbledygook………..Why? What is the reason behind this nick? So to know the reason behind my nick, here we go

At the time of my graduation I received the title of “Min Min Jee” ( in Urdu) which means that I talk in so less volume that every other person thinks that I am just moving my lips and making small sounds……….or I am just doing gibberish

So I started looking for something similar to the title I received and found Gobbledygook. To some it is a nonsensical language and for some it can be a secret language for sharing thoughts; but to my clan it’s a player with non sensical strategies and this clearly describes why my blog is gobbledygook……….because there are no links in all posts in my blog and it makes no sense whatsoever I am posting, just like this very post………which itself has become gobbledygook

Game Development in iPhone using Cocos2d

A couple of days back, I got a chance to explore Cocos2d and I found it very useful and easy to understand if you want to jump into Game Development for iPhone. I would suggest all newbies to go through the white paper by Monocle Studios which gives an introduction of how to convert your project into Cocos2d environment. Its been fun and I hope everyone will like it. Lets hope I come up with couple of games of my own too

Happy iPhone Development

Apps Amuck – 31 Days Tutorial of iPhone App Development

I came across this great and helpful site AppsAmuck and it contains 31 sample codes for 31 days. A new bee can start iPhone Application Development from here. Nice work by Apps Amuck Team. Keep it up!

Happy iPhone Development

Nowtees

Last year, I submitted a T-Shirt Design in Nowtees, and yesterday I received a letter from them that they have accepted my design. I signed an agreement, according to which my design is the property of Nowtees but they will put my name as designer in T-Shirt’s tag. I said to myself, why not? I designed it to submit at Nowtees, otherwise I would have never designed it, so it’s theirs

As soon as the T-Shirt comes in market, I’ll upload picture of that too. This incident has made me believe that we must try our best in all those areas which are in our range and Allah will give us positive results when we need them most. No doubt, God works in mysterious ways. Thanks Allah Almighty.